Something Ive Been Meaning to Tell You Read Free Page A

came home after school—she had heard the news at noon, from Char herself in fact, who had laughed and said, “Wouldn’t that kill you?”—and she found Char vomiting into the toilet. “Go get the Medical Book,” Char said to her. A terrible involuntary groan came out of her. “Read what it says about poison.” Et went instead to phone the doctor. Char came staggering out of the bathroom holding the bottle of bleach they kept behind the tub. “If you don’t put up the phoneI’ll drink the whole bottle,” she said in a harsh whisper. Their mother was presumably asleep behind her closed door.
    Et had to hang up the phone and look in the ugly old book where she had read long ago about childbirth and signs of death, and had learned about holding a mirror to the mouth. She was under the mistaken impression that Char had been drinking from the bleach bottle already, so she read all about that. Then she found it was the blueing. Blueing was not in the book, but it seemed the best thing to do would be to induce vomiting, as the book advised for most poisons—Char was at it already, didn’t need to have it induced—and then drink a quart of milk. When Char got the milk down she was sick again.
    “I didn’t do this on account of Blaikie Noble,” she said between spasms. “Don’t you ever think that. I wouldn’t be such a fool. A pervert like him. I did it because I’m sick of living.”
    “What are you sick of about living?” said Et sensibly when Char had wiped her face.
    “I’m sick of this town and all the stupid people in it and Mother and her dropsy and keeping house and washing sheets every day. I don’t think I’m going to vomit any more. I think I could drink some coffee. It says coffee.”
    Et made a pot and Char got out two of the best cups. They began to giggle as they drank.
    “I’m sick of Latin,” Et said. “I’m sick of Algebra. I think I’ll take blueing.”
    “Life is a burden,” Char said. “O Life, where is thy sting?”
    “O Death. O Death, where is thy sting?”
    “Did I say Life? I meant Death. O Death, where is thy sting? Pardon me.”

    One afternoon Et was staying with Arthur while Char shopped and changed books at the Library. She wantedto make him an eggnog, and she went searching in Char’s cupboard for the nutmeg. In with the vanilla and the almond extract and the artificial rum she found a small bottle of a strange liquid.
Zinc phosphide
. She read the label and turned it around in her hands. A rodenticide. Rat poison, that must mean. She had not known Char and Arthur were troubled with rats. They kept a cat, old Tom, asleep now around Arthur’s feet. She unscrewed the top and sniffed at it, to know what it smelled like. Like nothing. Of course. It must taste like nothing too, or it wouldn’t fool the rats.
    She put it back where she had found it. She made Arthur his eggnog and took it in and watched him drink it. A slow poison. She remembered that from Blaikie’s foolish story. Arthur drank with an eager noise, like a child, more to please her, she thought, than because he was so pleased himself. He would drink anything you handed him. Naturally.
    “How are you these days, Arthur?”
    “Oh, Et. Some days a bit stronger, and then I seem to slip back. It takes time.”
    But there was none gone, the bottle seemed full. What awful nonsense. Like something you read about, Agatha Christie. She would mention it to Char and Char would tell her the reason.
    “Do you want me to read to you?” she asked Arthur, and he said yes. She sat by the bed and read to him from a book about the Duke of Wellington. He had been reading it by himself but his arms got tired holding it. All those battles, and wars, and terrible things, what did Arthur know about such affairs, why was he so interested? He knew nothing. He did not know why things happened, why people could not behave sensibly. He was too good. He knew about history but not about what went on, in front of his eyes, in his